Pakistan

2012

When CPJ covered the Pakistani government's attempt
to build a massive censorship system for the country's Internet in
February, we noted a key problem with such huge blocking systems: they are, at
heart, democratically unaccountable.

CPJ's María Salazar-Ferro names the 12 countries where journalists are murdered regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes. Where are leaders failing to uphold the law? Where are conditions getting better? And where is free expression in danger? (4:46)

Brazil, Pakistan, and India--three nations with high
numbers of unsolved journalist murders--failed an important
test last month in fighting the scourge of impunity. Delegates from the three
countries took the lead in raising objections to a U.N. plan that would
strengthen international efforts to combat deadly anti-press violence.

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In case there was any doubt about the stance of Pakistani
authorities on the murder of journalists, UNESCO's 28th
biennial session offered an instructive insight. In addition to discussing
the U.N.
Draft Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity
during the meeting, held in Paris in March, member states were to report on
judicial inquiries into the killings of journalists from 2006 to 2009. Pakistan
was among 17 countries that did not respond to the request. It was also one of
three countries that refused to discuss the UNESCO draft, intended to take legislative
measures to combat attacks on the press. This was a reflection of our sad state
of affairs.

Pakistani journalists are
under threat, and the public is paying the price. The most recent report from
the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan includes a detailed chapter on freedom
of expression, which ties growing suppression to rising incidence of violence
and threats against news media. Not coincidentally, Pakistan sits near the top
of CPJ's Impunity Index and other the global lists of most dangerous countries
for reporters.

Given that it is usually punishable by death, "treason" is a
dangerous word to bandy about. When it is applied to journalists, it is even
more worrisome. We've seen that in Sri Lanka, which is in the throes of a
backlash against a U.N. resolution on past human rights abuses. (See "Amid
Sri Lankan denial, threats rise for journalists.") Photographs of
journalists who have been critical of Colombo, their faces barely obscured, have
been shown on television; one broadcast even repeatedly used the picture of a
journalist's daughter, according to the Network for Rights media support
group.

At Columbia University on Monday evening, CPJ board member Ahmed Rashid held forth to a full house
in a conversation with Steve Coll about U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. If you're reading this blog, there's most likely no need to explain
who Rashid is--or Coll, for that matter. The earliest reference
I could find on cpj.org to Rashid dated back to 2000, about events in 1999, when he
was the Islamabad bureau chief for the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review. His latest book, Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan,
is the most recent installment in a steady stream of trenchant, reliable,
reality-based analysis of geopolitical affairs in Central and South Asia. If
you need to be convinced, check out Foreign
Policy's list of Top 100 Global Thinkers.

A video of the event, which was co-sponsored by CPJ, is now available here.

March 22, 2012 10:00 AM ET

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Last month, Pakistan's government put out requests for
proposals for a massive, centralized, Internet censorship system. Explaining
that "ISPs and backbone providers have expressed their inability to block
millions of undesirable web sites using current manual blocking systems,"
the state-run National Information Communications Technology Research and
Development Fund said it therefore requires "a national URL filtering and
blocking system."

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In Pakistan, the term "a war of words" can take on a
menacing dimension beyond the metaphorical. Words--written, spoken, or
reported--regularly land journalists in trouble, a very literal, physical
sort of trouble. Reporters have become accustomed to being threatened, and over
the years they've seen threats sometimes build to abductions, beatings, and
even death. Such violence seldom comes without a string of prior warnings.